http://hdl.handle.net/2436/6297 Fri, 24 May 2013 08:09:07 GMT 2013-05-24T08:09:07Z http://hdl.handle.net/2436/30414 Title: Power of source as a factor in deontic inference Authors: Kilpatrick, S.G.; Manktelow, Ken I.; Over, D.E. Abstract: Power has been studied in various guises in both the social cognition and the reasoning literatures. In this paper, three experiments are reported in which this factor was investigated in the domain of deontic thinking. Power of source of deontic statements was varied within several scenarios, and participants judged the degree to which they thought an injunction would be carried out. In the first experiment, permission statements were used, and it was found that, as predicted, power was positively related to degree of endorsement of deontic conclusions across scenarios. In the second experiment, these findings were generalised across three further deontic domains (threat, warning, and promise) and two different syntactic forms (conjunctive and disjunctive). In the third experiment, the hypothesis that power effects were mediated by subjective judgements of conditional probability was investigated and confirmed. It is argued that these results favour theories that give a general role to probabilistic factors, rather than those based on domain-specific Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2436/30414 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2436/30413 Title: Influence of language background on tests of cognitive abilities: Australian data Authors: Carstairs, Jane R.; Myors, Brett; Shores, E. Arthur; Fogarty, Gerard Abstract: This study examines the effect of language background on the performance of healthy participants on a battery of cognitive measures. The study was conducted as part of a larger normative study: the Macquarie University Neuropsychological Normative Study (MUNNS). A comparison was made between the test performance of three language background groups: participants from a non-English-speaking background whose first language was other than English (NESB-OE, N = 42); participants from a non-English-speaking background whose first language was English (NESB-E, N = 34); and participants from an English-speaking background (ESB, N = 40). A number of tests used in clinical neuropsychological assessment were found to be sensitive to the background of the participant, and trends in the data suggest that two factors are operating independently. It is proposed that one factor is language or proficiency in English that impacts on verbal subtests and the other is a sociocultural factor that impacts on performance or nonverbal subtests. These findings question current practices when assessing people from non-English-speaking backgrounds. Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2436/30413 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2436/30412 Title: Accuracy of percentile judgments used in the utility analysis of personnel selection procedures Authors: Myors, Brett; Carstairs, Jane R.; Todorov, Natasha Abstract: Schmidt, Hunter, McKenzie and Muldrow's (1979) global estimation procedure for determining the standard deviation of job performance in monetary terms (SDy) is based on the assumption that people are able to estimate the percentiles of a normal distribution. The aim of the research reported here was to test the veracity of this assumption. We used participants who were primed to work with percentiles on a task that provided all the information necessary to solve the problem. Participants' percentile estimates were found to be grossly in error, suggesting that utilities estimated by the Schmidt et al. procedure are inaccurate. This finding was replicated in a second study which also examined the effect of group decision-making on the estimation process. Group estimates were found to be no better than individual estimates Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2436/30412 2002-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2436/29532 Title: Factorial invariance for combined Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised and Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised scores in a sample of clients with alcohol dependency. Authors: Bowden, Stephen C.; Ritter, Alison J.; Carstairs, Jane R.; Shores, E. Arthur; Pead, J.; Greeley, Janet D.; Whelan, Gregory; Long, Caroline M.; Clifford, Christine C. Abstract: This study examined the joint factor structure of the WAIS-R and WMS-R in a sample of 289 participants (mostly males) with alcohol dependency. In a confirmatory phase we contrasted a range of factor models derived from previous analyses of the Wechsler scales. The best fitting model incorporated five factors representing Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Organization, Attention-Concentration, Verbal Memory, and Visual Memory, with reassignment of factor loadings for two subtests. The invariance of the measurement model was then examined comparing data from a large sample of healthy participants (J. R. Carstairs & E. A. Shores, 1999). The results indicated that the number of factors was invariant across samples, and four of the factors satisfied the criterion of partial measurement invariance. Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2436/29532 2001-01-01T00:00:00Z